Rafal Cholewa says the recession has led him to consider returning to Poland. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Coming from a figure not noted for his fondness towards immigrants, Norman Tebbit's recent urging of supposedly workshy Britons to be more like Poles underlined the potency of that modern stereotype: the Polish plumber or builder.

As prejudicial shorthand for a generation of workers who came to Britain in the wake of Poland's accession to the EU it was always a double-edged label. One linked to fears of British workers losing out to cheaper foreign labour, while a benign flipside emphasised the reliability and strong work ethic of Poles.

For electrician Rafal Cholewa, now entering his 10th year in London, it is the latter that is taking a toll. He has built up his own home automation business by commuting into the city from Essex to work 12-hour days.

"If someone is using a Polish builder the client wants a budget job. But the expectation is that the quality could be higher than alternatives. The standards have been raised," says the father-of-two, whose wife is expecting their third child in June.

Crucially however, and despite owning a home in the UK, he says the impact of the recession has led him to begin seriously considering returning to Poland, where he has bought land.

"When I first came in 2001 my expectations were not so high, it was easier to get a job and compared to the Polish wages it was a huge difference," says 32-year-old Cholewa, who recently experienced his worst month for years in terms of business turnover.

"But now my expectations have changed; with children, my priorities are different and at the moment I feel that in terms of quality of life it would be no harder to achieve just as high a standard as a middle-class or lower middle-class person in Poland."

If a glut of post-recession headlines are to be believed, aspirational families such as the Cholewas are not the only Poles preparing to leave. One narrative holds that a "wave" of immigration from the east has been reversed by a combination of rising unemployment in Britain and the relatively impressive performance of the Polish economy, the only one in the EU to avoid recession.

Perhaps inevitably, the true picture is less clear. According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), an independent agency in Washington, gross inflows of migrants from eastern Europe to the UK fell dramatically during the recession. Essentially, it brought that community to a halt. However, growth appears to have resumed. An MPI analysis of UK Labour Force Survey data from last year suggested there were an estimated 560,000 Poles and 850,000 eastern Europeans living in the UK – the highest levels on record.

So what's behind the figures? One theory is that immigration from Poland has become "normalised" after influxes post-1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and again post-2004 (Polish accession to the EU).

"People are now are migrating for a more complex range of reasons other than perhaps just that they had never been able to travel so freely before," says Dr Becky Taylor, lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London.

"Quite complicated, often personal, reasons underpin people's decision to migrate – not just economics. I'm thinking, for example, of someone whose boyfriend died and it was partly about being able to escape, or someone who is quite a strong feminist and really appreciates London because of its diversity and cultural acceptance."

Others, points out Taylor, come to the UK to improve their English as a marketable global skill. "We sometimes wrongly see the UK as the end point in migration," she adds.

The Polish community continues to evolve in the Berkshire town of Reading, where a plethora of delis, cafes and other shops symbolise its position as one of England's largest urban concentrations of Poles.

Abdullah Durani, the Ukrainian-educated, Afghan-born owner of a convenience shop catering for Poles and other eastern Europeans, blames the recession for a drop in customers.

"A lot of them lost jobs here, particularly ones who didn't learn English, and they are moving to other countries, especially now that Germany is an option," he says, referring to the opening up of the German labour market to workers from 10 eastern European countries in May.

Behind the cash till further down the street at the Lady Bee Polskie Delikatesy, Klaudya Nieroda says she will be on the move with her boyfriend after completing her graphic design course at Thames Valley University. Sweden, rather than Germany, is her choice, while she remains unimpressed with attempts by Polish municipal authorities to attract graduates home. "It was just hard to believe what they were saying – stuff like they were going to create a second Ireland," she says.

However, the majority of Poles who came to Reading during the mid-nineties are staying, according to Andrzej Ostapko, who runs a massage and hydrotherapy business in Slough and set up a web portal for the Polish community.

"Sure, we are seeing the impact of the redundancies and some of us who could not speak English went home," he says. "But those still here are more settled and integrated. Our friends are getting married to local people and immigrants from elsewhere – Africa and other places."

Polish workers increasingly appear to be putting down roots outside defined pockets such as Reading.

Well-heeled Poles in London, for example, have set up a Polish City Club whose goals range from helping Polish entrepreneurs become more successful to promoting the business image of Poland itself.

A similar confidence among Poles in sectors such as financial services is also demonstrated by the politically tinged activities of another group, Polish Professionals in London (PPL). As well as spearheading a "Poles to polls" campaign to encourage the community to vote in the 2008 local elections, it lobbied the Times newspaper in a "Campaign for historical truth" in response to what the PPL claimed was unfair and negative coverage accusing Poles of active involvement in the Holocaust.

"People with experience in London and an exposure to an international environment are very highly valued in Warsaw, especially among multinationals setting up headquarters there," says Adam Komarnicki, an accountant and PPL organiser. But last year he says he detected the beginning of a trend of Polish professionals returning home, often through recruitment agencies. "The salaries are lower but the cost of living is much cheaper and the quality of life is better in comparison to London, so many are tempted."

Those still enjoying a London lifestyle include Dominika Zasada, a wedding dress designer from Krakow. "I've felt free here to do what I've always wanted to do, such as setting up my own business," says the 27-year-old, who lives in Notting Hill with her husband, a fund manager. "I've been able to discover myself here, and I also love London because it's so big and multicultural."

Britain's Polish communities aren't confined to London and the south-east; thousands settled in Northern Ireland, where they have played an important role in rebuilding the post-peace process labour-starved economy.

Consider, too, those working in rural settings. Instances include care home or agricultural workers in East Anglia, or food processing workers in parts of Wales that may never before have experienced significant inflows of migrants.

Other regions have randomly developed as magnets for Poles from specific parts of Poland. While areas of Crewe and Wales have big concentrations of people from central Poland, Southampton is home to large numbers of natives of south-east Poland.

"It's very difficult to generalise," says Dr Michal Garapich, a social anthropologist at Roehampton University who has studied migration from Poland. "We are still talking about migration from a country economically struggling with a lot of things, which is still quite poor and largely agricultural.

"So it's important to recognise the diversity of Poles here. Take, for example, the huge groups of Polish Roma in UK who have a completely different take on London and are especially positive about its cosmopolitan nature. In fact, London is now probably the seat of largest congregation of Polish Roma outside Poland, and will soon surpass it if the trend continues."

Although he plans to return home, Rafal Cholewa says he is eager to ensure the door to the UK should remain open other generations who want to come back here, like his son.

"It is really important for me to give him that chance. I have that feeling I won't achieve much more here, but I want the best for all my children. So while I might go back to Poland and start another phase of our life there, we will hold on to our house here in the UK and make sure that the door back is not shut."

Krakow calling: Britons who go the other way

Although hardly an inverse of the past decade's migratory pattern from Poland to the UK, a small but steady stream of British workers does go in the other direction.

Experienced engineers, project managers and accountants are in particular demand, according to recruitment companies such as Headcount, which sources European workers for Poland's economy, the only one in the EU to avoid recession and which is forecast to grow by 4% this year.

"A big factor is the amount of build going on for the Euro 2012 football championships, and a lot of direct investment has come in because of the low base rate," says Headcount's managing director, Stephen Kelly.

Notions of an economic miracle are overplayed, according to Jamie Stokes, editor of the English-language Krakow Post, but he notes that more Britons are coming and that their profile has changed. "It used to be classic expats sent by western companies to set up and manage local branches, plus others teaching English and looking for adventure," he says. There are now more "independents" finding they can freelance in IT and publishing .

In most cases though, he says Britons come because they have a Polish partner – nearly always a woman. They include Ben Szymanski, a software programmer from Bromley who works mostly from the home he shares with his Polish wife and children in the countryside near Krakow.

"I have one Polish grandparent and was always interested in Poland," says Szymanski, who writes the British in Poland blog. "People contact me and say they have lost their job, or their girlfriend is Polish and they thought they might come here. The biggest complaints tend to be over bureaucracy – opening a bank account is really painful."

But Szymanski says the quality of life is attractive, "and there seem to be more days off. I've also got a bigger house, so when I work from home I can finish early and step straight out into the garden into 30C heat."

Correction: This article was amended at 15:45 on 11 April 2011. It previously said Dr Becky Taylor was from the University of Sussex's geography department. This has been corrected.